


What Would You Do In My Shoes?

by mysterioussinkhole



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Archivist Martin, Grumpy Tsundere Jon, Multi, Probably going to be a chapter per season, Role Swap AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-17 18:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18103808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterioussinkhole/pseuds/mysterioussinkhole
Summary: An AU born from the fact that Tim and Sasha’s roles were initially supposed to be the other way around. So Tim gets replaced, Sasha has an axe to grind with the Stranger, Jon is a disgruntled Assistant with an obvious crush on his boss, and Martin is the Archivist. The rest you’ll have to read to find out.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Martin gets a promotion.

They knew about his CV. They had to know. Why else would some middling researcher get called to speak to the Head of the Magnus Institute? Oh god, he was going to be fired and no one would ever hire him again and his mum would be kicked out of her care home and he’d have to wander from town to town with one of those folded bandana bags on a stick and—  
“Ah, Mr. Blackwood. Come in.”  
The voice was cold and humorless. He was ushered into the office and made to sit in a profoundly uncomfortable chair in front of the desk. Staring him down like he was some fresh curiosity was Gertrude Robinson. Martin almost felt sad that he wouldn’t be around to see her retire. The woman must be pushing eighty and she’d run the Institute for as long as anyone could remember. Her gaze felt like it was boring into his skull. It nearly hurt.  
“Mr. Blackwood,” she began. “Do you know why I called you in to see me today?”  
Play dumb.  
“You wanted to see me?” he squeaked out.  
NOT THAT DUMB.  
Gertrude’s eyebrows furrowed and her mouth started to form a question until she apparently decided to just continue on with whatever game she was playing. Toying with him when they both knew he was about to get sacked. He’d never thought her to be cruel.  
“I asked you here today because I’m sure you’ve heard about Elias Bouchard’s recent disappearance.”  
Oh. He was… not losing his job?  
“Though it has only been a few months, due to the rather morbid look of the situation, of which I’m sure you’ve heard rumors,” she rolled her eyes a bit. “We’ve decided to fill the position of Head Archivist. I have decided on you.”  
Martin’s brain short-circuited. He was getting promoted! Promoted to a job that he was in no way qualified for. Suddenly he had two, tiny metaphorical Martins, one on each shoulder. The one on the left was saying, “Say no! Don’t dig yourself deeper into this lie you’ve built your life on. It’s not worth it and they’ll find out for sure!” while the one on the right was insisting, “You’d have the money to move her somewhere better. Hell, you’d have the money to move yourself somewhere better. If they haven’t figured it out by now they never will. Plus, it’s quiet in the Archives. Plenty of stuff to read, too.”  
After a moment of careful thought he said, “I’ll do it.”  
Gertrude gave him a thin smile and shook his hand, before explaining the further requirements of the job, “The Archives are not in a state that I would refer to as organized. You’ll have your work cut out for you getting it all in order so I’m allowing you to take on a few researchers as assistants.”  
“Sasha James and Tim Stoker,” he said without hesitation. Sasha was probably the smartest person he knew and Tim was much better at dealing with people than he was. They were work friends, the type you’d go to lunch with on Fridays. This could work. They would help him. He wouldn’t be completely out of his depth just yet. And he’d bluffed his way through unfamiliar territory before… Oh God, what was he thinking? Dragging more people into an impending implosion?  
She nodded in agreement before adding, “Take Jonathan Sims, too.”  
Martin had to fight to suppress a groan. Alright, Jon wasn’t that bad but he was just so… grumpy. He grumbled around the office like he was Scrooge and every day was Christmas. If it were up to Martin he’d rather not deal with Mr. Sunshine. It was a bit much for him as is.  
“Erm— Alright. May I, um that is, may I ask why?”  
She sighed, “We’ve had a few complaints from his coworkers and a few disputes involving him that were difficult to get settled, so I felt it was best to keep him out of the way for a time. Understood?”  
He nodded, vaguely remembering a mug being thrown at the general vicinity of Jon’s desk. Or was it from?  
“Is there anything else I need to know?” Martin asked.  
Gertrude shook her head and motioned for him to go. He left in a daze. For just a moment he felt utterly transparent, like you could look at him and know every last thing about him. Despite his apparent safety, he felt seen.  
The next morning he ventured down into the Archives. Technically, he wasn’t due to start work as Head Archivist until the following Monday but he just wanted to see it. The lights took a few flickers to fully come on when he flipped the switch, illuminating a much larger space than he’d anticipated in an eerie fluorescent glow. The room stretched long and there were rows of shelves reaching up to twice his height, stacked with boxes of files of written statements from centuries worth of people. It was massive. There were stacks of paper on the tables at the front of the room and all the way in the back corner was his office. His office was still Elias’s office. No one had ever bothered to clean it out. There wasn’t much decoration apart from one of those lamps with the green glass shades that libraries always seemed to have and a weathered old rendering of an eye in some inscrutable script framed on the wall. He’d kept this place neater than the rest of the Archives. Martin had only seen him a few times. Elias Bouchard has been in his mid-fifties with a washed out look to him and facial features that escaped notability. Nothing about him seemed to hint towards his end being inevitably violent.  
It felt odd to rifle through another person’s desk but it was technically his now. There were a couple statements tucked away, an unused pad of sticky notes, an alarmingly large Swiss Army Knife, a change of clothes, an empty plastic bag that smelled like marijuana, and a tape recorder. Martin took a seat in his chair and a deep breath. Being down here actually helped to calm his nerves. This would be a challenge for anyone.  
People said things about the Magnus Institute’s Archives. That those who went down to tell their horror stories came up different. They said giving up your story meant giving up a part of yourself that you couldn’t get back. Martin didn’t put much stock in such talk, but sitting there he imagined himself as the keeper of what was left behind. What had been taken.  
On impulse, he picked up the tape recorder. There was a clean tape already inside. Upon pressing the button the recorder clicked on and began whirring. He cleared his throat.  
“This is Martin Blackwood, the new Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. Feels a bit weird saying that out loud. For the longest time that was someone else but now I suppose it’s me. I honestly don’t know where to start down here. I’m going to try my best to get it all in working order but… the previous Archivist just disappeared. No one knows why. No one seems to care. Everyone thinks he’s dead. I- I’m not sure I want to be by myself in this place. I mean, I won’t be when Tim and Sasha get here… and Jon, I suppose. It’s just… something isn’t right. I don’t know what and I know it would be better if I just ignored this odd feeling I get when I’m here but I can’t. What if that’s what killed the last Archivist?”  
He shut it off and closed his eyes. Where had all of that anxiety just come from? He hadn’t even been thinking about it on a conscious level. Strange. With another deep breath he steadied himself. This was his place now.


	2. Infestation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Institute has something in its walls.

“Statement ends. God, losing things like that... I can’t even imagine. The research with this one is actually fascinating because Sasha did find Mr. Ramao’s marriage license, but only his name is on it. The space for his husband is blank. It definitely warrants consideration that something supernatural was at work. No one’s heard from Mr Ramao in quite some time, according to Tim, so a follow up seems unlikely. I hope he’s ok...”

The sentiment felt pathetic even to him. He’d learned by now that the people in these statements rarely made it out unscathed. He should call Naomi sometime soon. Martin wasn’t sure if trying to befriend someone who came in to give a statement was a good idea but she had just seemed so lonely. Maybe he should check up on those ghost hunters too.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of something crawling over one of his bookshelves. A spider! It was large and even a bit fuzzy. He could’ve just left it alone, but truth be told Martin had something of a soft spot for arachnids and knew that if anyone else saw it they would kill it. Tentatively, he shuffled over to get a better look. Only six eyes, long legs, bright green jaw. It was probably a tube web spider. Didn’t get too many of them in the basement. He grabbed an empty mug of tea Jon had shoved into his hands earlier and carefully brushed the little guy into it. It wriggled indignantly. Then, with more determination than he had ever seen in a common garden spider, it jumped.

Martin lurched back in surprise and crashed into the bookshelf. Several thick tomes hit him on the head. He may have been out for a second, but when he came to Tim was standing over him and trying not to laugh.

“You alright, boss? Lose a fight with an encyclopedia?”

He still said boss like it was some joke he never expected Martin to understand. Standing up on his own, he looked at the damage. The shelf had somehow managed to put a hole in the wall. Was he going to have to pay to fix the damage himself?

“Wait,” Tim motioned him closer and lifted the bookcase away from the hole. “I didn’t think there was space here. Shouldn’t it be solid?”

Martin joined him and turned on his phone’s flashlight. There was indeed a dark cavity where there should not have been. The light glinted off of something small, silver, and squirming.

“RUN!”

The day that followed passed like a nightmare. It was a confusing twist of worms burrowing into his skin, frenzied running, and oxygen deprivation. And somehow he had come out the other side. Martin could feel his mind start to drift away from his body and get lost in the memories, so he did his best to ground himself. He was perched on the back of an ambulance, wrapped up in bandages all down his arms and legs. Some on his chest. A few on his head. Lights flashed from emergency vehicles gathered around the Institute. Sasha was in a similar condition to him and rested in a different ambulance. Tim was fine for the most part but someone had put a shock blanket on him. He appeared to wandering around with no destination in mind. No one had found Jon yet.

It hurt to breathe. Every time he thought he had managed to calm down he felt the ghost of something beneath his flesh and the panic cane flooding back. He sat there for hours watching the sky fade from bursts of color to the dim beginnings of night, trying to get his thoughts in order. They wanted him to stay the night in the hospital but he would rather die than be in a confined space any longer.

How were they going to move on from this?

A cry went up. Turning, he saw several people rushing down the road to an odd gap in the pavement. A manhole, maybe? They crowded in before he could get a good look at what was going on. After a few minutes they all made their way back to the emergency vehicles and Martin caught site of two paramedics holding onto Jon. His face was stricken and he was murmuring about something. He wasn’t usually so out of sorts. Over the past few weeks of Jon staying in the Archives they had almost become friends, getting lunch together and making sure he actually worked instead of doing perimeter checks all day. For all his jabs about Martin’s belief in the supernatural there was something in him that had been profoundly shaken by Prentiss’s siege on his home. Under all those layers of bluster and discontent was a person Martin would very much like to know. To see him like this...

Before he could think better of it, Martin pulled himself up and took painful steps towards the ensuing drama. It cost most of his willpower not to pass out but he managed to push past the paramedics. Jon’s eyes adjusted when they saw him and he suddenly latched onto Martin’s arms. Pain poked holes in his skin. His focus, however, was held by the words coming out of Jon’s mouth.

“I found the body. Elias. Someone shot him. He’s dead. They murdered him. It had to be someone working here. Martin, what’s happening?”

Murder. Jesus fucking Christ, could he not have one moment of respite? Why would you shoot an Archivist? Was someone going to shoot him?

Poor Jon, having to see something like that.

The light went out of the world. When he slipped back into consciousness he was back in the ambulance and full of a new resolve. He knew he should take it easy and try to recover, but how could he? Jon was right, no one would’ve killed Elias in those tunnels without knowing the Institute inside and out. Someone he worked with was the killer, or at least knew who killed him. Like it or not, it fell to him to sort it out. Martin put on his best manners to ask for stronger pain medication and set to work putting together an account of the past day’s events.

He spent as little time with Sasha as possible. She was tired and all the worse for wear from the attack. He’d been with her most of the time anyway so he asked a few questions and backed off as they took her to the hospital. Gertrude seemed utterly unphased by the whole ordeal, despite describing a wave of worms coming at her and having to flood the building with CO2. What did this woman get up to in her spare time? Sasha used to joke about her using interns for spooky experiments and going bungee jumping on holiday. Might not be far off... But Tim’s story matched up with hers. He also seemed to be mostly undisturbed, even having had to go through Storage. Despite it all, he remained his normal reserved self and said no more than what was absolutely necessary. He’d almost be more concerned if Tim babbled incessantly. Maybe this experience would bring him out of his shell and they would become closer as a result. Bonded by mutual suffering and all that.

And then there was Jon. By the time Martin worked his way around to him, the medication was beginning to wear off and Jon had built his usual barriers back up. His tone had little of its previous panic left as he told his story. But there was something in his eyes that told Martin he wouldn’t be sleeping any time soon. The story he told matched Martin’s for the most part up until where they had diverged from each other and he had wandered around until he stumbled across the room containing stacks of tapes and a dead Archivist.

“Alright Jon. Thank you for your time. I’m all done.”

As he turned to leave, Jon caught his hand in his own (gentler this time) and said, “Martin... I’m sorry for leaving you behind. It wasn’t intentional. I thought— I thought you were with me.”

The genuine concern caught him off guard.

“It’s ok,” he said, easing out of his grip. “Try to get some rest, yeah?”

Jon gave him a half-hearted scowl and excused himself.

Martin sat down roughly on the pavement, wincing a bit. Well, fuck. That was his world torn to shreds. Someone, most likely someone he knew, had murdered Elias. The police would probably look into it, but they wouldn’t understand this place like he did. They could take Tim’s reticence or Jon’s abrasiveness the wring way. They could accuse them of being a cult because of the rumors or find out about some of their less orthodox research practices. Not to mention how they’d react to his tapes... the tapes. They had Elias’s tapes. Oh no, he was going to need those!

He began desperately hobbling around trying to find any police officer with old looking boxes. The search was to no avail until he practically crashed into a passing detective.

“Oi, watch it mate!”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I just— those tapes. I need to see those tapes.”

“Yeah, no can do. These are evidence,” she paused to look him over. “You the Archivist?”

Martin nodded.

“Guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other then. Detective Melanie King. I’m in charge of the murder investigation.”


	3. Children of the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin has some questions.
> 
> Note: Trigger warnings for mild substance abuse and unhealthy mindsets. It’s ok if you want to skip this one. The sun will come out eventually, I promise.

 Martin’s mind was cramped. Too many things rattling around up there: A murderer lurked among his friends wearing one of their faces, Gertrude was getting more and more cryptic about what she actually wanted him to do, the Archives were still a mess, Melanie refused to give him more than one tape at a time, and to top it all off the damn computers still wouldn’t work. The fact that Alfred Breekon, Vampire Hunter was still alive even though he would have sworn the man was dead pushed him over the edge. His senses, his memory, his judgement were abandoning him too? It was all too much, pulling his attention in a million directions all over the persistent background roar of anxiety. His mind felt red and raw and dark. It was static with a palpable texture that mercilessly ground down his ability to function.

 Before he could think better of it he grabbed the bottle of pills that had recently become a permanent fixture on his desk and shook a few out. The rate he went through them these days wasn’t strictly advisable but they gave him a break from it all. They had originally been for the pain until he had discovered that they quieted his mind enough to allow him to sleep. And he rarely had the dreams this way. Martin wasn’t sure he was ready to confront what the dreams meant just yet. It was only one o’clock in the afternoon but he’d been up the whole night anyway, so he laid down on the cot in the safe room. As he drifted off his mind cooled down. Memory filtered through his thoughts unimpeded. Little vignettes of his life...

  _He was all dressed up for his bar mitzvah, nervously running over lines of Hebrew in his head. His mother fixed him with a look that made his insides go cold and mushy. She didn’t take any pictures._

_He researched a case back when he was around nineteen where a woman had been buried alive. It wasn’t supernatural but done out of pure human malice and that scared him more._

_He once went to get ice cream with a now ex-boyfriend. The shop they went to didn’t put coloring in the mint chocolate chip and they playfully bickered the whole time over the merits of green ice cream._

_He caught Jon talking to himself while he had stayed in the Archives. It was a habit of his and Martin got an odd sense of voyeuristic pleasure from hearing the stream of his consciousness. Until he said, “What would they think of me if they knew who I really am?” and his blood had run cold._

The tendrils of a dream wrapped around those words and contorted them into elusive snatches of a narrative he would never remember while awake. Something about a mirror and draining blood and his skin fitting wrong. Was it even his? Eyes, everywhere eyes, seeing straight through his façade.

  _You can’t hide forever, little Archivist._

All at once sleep abandoned him. According to his phone it was 3:52. The only thoughts he could think with any clarity were “What would they think of me if they knew who I really am?” and “I should take more next time.”

 The door squeaked open. He jerked in surprise and took a moment to process that it was Jon poking his head in and saying, “Martin, will you stop making those noises?! Honestly, I can hear you from the break room... Are you alright?”

 Right. That droning noise was him. Best stop that. Jon came over and sat next to him on the cot. They stared at each other and it sort of turned into a staring contest because neither wanted to feel what it was like to be the first to look away. Jon cut through the tense atmosphere that had settled around them by clearing his throat. With a conspiratorial side glance he said, “You know... Sasha’s out meeting with people from that shelter in the ‘vampire’ statement and Tim is out with his boyfriend. Which, tell me I’m not the only one who thinks it’s weird that his name is Tom. It’d be like me having a boyfriend named Jan.”

 Martin nodded absently as Jon got sidetracked scoffing at the notion of similarly named partners. The word TimTam might have come up at some point.

 “But anyways, I was thinking we could do some more investigating into The Situation. Does that sound good?”

 Jon was lying about something and Martin was suddenly seized by an intense need to know everything he was hiding from him. There was not likely to be a better chance than this.

 “You know what?” he pasted a smile on his face. “I’d love to.”

 Jon smirked at him.

 “So who are your bets on? I’m honestly eyeing Tim at the moment with how often he’s gone. Have you got the chance—“

 “No, Jon. I’m not interested in theories. Today, I’m interested in you.”

 Jon’s pupils expanded at a frankly improbable rate, making his dark eyes even darker. His lips parted and he leaned subtly closer. That was... something to unpack on another day.

 “What are you lying to me about?”

 The air froze. Not a singular subatomic particle moved for two whole seconds.

 “What are you talking about?”

 “I heard you. ‘What would they think of me if they knew who I really am?’ Does that sound familiar?”

 “I— you heard that? It was just, erm...”

 “No. Don’t try to lie to me.”

 “Martin, where is this coming from?”

 “Just tell me!”

 “I— I’m not sure what you think—“

 “ **What don’t you want me to know?** ”

 The words ripped out of him like a baby tooth on a string, and a sense of... something coursed through his veins. With a small shock he realized what it was: Power. Rich and precious. Martin watched Jon’s face relax even though his eyes betrayed an inner panic as he spat out, “I BELIEVE IN THE SUPERNATURAL!”

 Oh.

 “I always have. I never thought I would be taken seriously if I came right out and said so. It felt safer to play the role, let it roll off my back, rather than take it to heart. Living was easier if I could pretend those things weren’t out there.”

 That rush of power was immediately overwhelmed by a tide of guilt. What had he just done? He could only imagine how violated Jon must feel... but. There was a story. A reason. He could sense it. A choice lay before him and he made a decision. Gentler this time he said, “ **Tell me.** ”

 And he did. The whole horrific story came pouring out of Jon’s mouth uninhibited. A pressure built in his chest with every recounted page of that awful book. Martin started to cry. All those times he had teased him about getting a pet tarantula and naming it after him. The way he flinched when there was a knock on the office door while they commiserated over evidence. He felt sick. To make matters worse, Jon did not break eye contact with him the entire time, as if to say, “You wanted this. Take it.”

 When he had finished they sat in silence for five full minutes. Martin had never been more ashamed of himself in his life. What could he do after something like that? Apologize? Tell his own story so the damage was reciprocal? How do you mend a tie you cut yourself? The first thing he managed to choke out was, “You’re better than me.”

 Even with his head buried in his hands he could feel Jon waiting for an explanation. It wouldn’t come. He was done talking for awhile. After a few more minutes the springs creaked and Jon’s weight was gone from the cot. Footsteps. The door opened. And then a deep inhalation that seemed to take all of the breath from his own lungs.

 “I— Sasha is worried about you. She keeps talking about getting you help. You need to keep it together, Martin. I’ll... I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 The door shut.

  _Mr. Spider doesn’t like it. Mr. Spider wants more._

Martin sobbed. He cried like a child, vocally and unrestrained. In all honesty he felt like a child, one who had done something wrong and had to endure that first crushing realization that it was no one’s fault but their own.

 Every time an inner voice tried to reassure him that he couldn’t have known Jon was innocent or that the influence he wielded was unpredictable, he only burrowed himself deeper into his own self-hatred. It was the closest thing to penance he was capable of at the moment. He didn’t go home that night, instead spending it doing the mindless task of scanning useless statements into the online database. It numbed his brain well enough. Tim’s claims of computer error seemed to have been fixed. One less thing to worry about, he supposed.

 As morning came around, he ventured into the break room and made a cup of peppermint tea in the mug with the blue swirls of paint that someone had made at a chain pottery shop. The one that reminded him of Starry Night if you looked at it from the right angle. It still had the chip in it where it had hit Jon’s desk. He never let anyone else use it. Waiting for the tea to steep, his eyes caught on that solid black mug with faux metallic webs etched into it hanging on the rack. A gift. Or maybe a threat. Best not to dwell on things left by Montauk and Herbert. He deposited the drink on the table Jon had appropriated as his work space and cluttered with his disparate collection of reading material. Volume I of The Rise and Fall of The Roman Empire, Wildlife of North America: A Naturalist’s Life List, and The Bell Jar all had bookmarks in them. Martin smiles. He couldn’t say why. Remembering and early row of theirs over his linguistic prowess, he stuck a stray sticky note on the steaming mug and left his message.

  **Mea Culpa**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can probably tell, Martin’s intervention was very different from Jon’s.


	4. An Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin hits rock bottom.
> 
> Note: Same trigger warnings apply here, but less so.

 Everything in his world was subsumed in blood. It rushed in his ears. His heart was pumping hard enough to burst. The office desk, miles away, would still be dripping with it. There had been so much blood. Could human bodies really hold all of that? He’d never seen the inside of a head before. Maybe those meat statements weren’t too far off about everyone being electrified viscera waiting to crack open.

 Martin was running down a street, he couldn’t tell you which one, as fast as he could manage. Admittedly, it wasn’t that fast but adrenaline pushed him through the fatigue. It was dark out, had been for hours. Streetlights blurred into floating orbs of incandescence. Was his vision going? Was it the pills he’d taken? Was he crying? All of it blended together at this point. He didn’t know where he was going, where he could go in a situation like this. They’d look for him at home or at one of the other’s flats or with his mum. Melanie would be after him. He knew that odd gleam in her eye meant that she was looking forward to the day when she killed him. Like a bomb itching to go off. The fuse was lit. His days were numbered.

 This was all his fault. He just had to leave the room, didn’t he? The things Leitner had told him... cosmic beings the likes of which could drive men mad with their barest outline, seeping in at the edges of the world. And he, an unwitting servant. It had only been a moment. Just  a moment to step into the break room, take a couple pills to calm himself down, and take a long drink of water from that spiderweb mug. Perhaps he had stood too long in that surreal liminal space, fluorescent tubes lighting an empty room in an otherwise dark building, considering how he’d cracked under pressure and broke his streak of no medication. He could have been trying to remember Tim’s face. Somewhere in those minutes a person had split Smirke’s skull open with a blunt pipe that Martin had handled. It would look by all accounts like he was a murderer. An image of Jon and Sasha gaping in horror flashed through his mind.

 The energy to keep running was ebbing away and his balance was going with it. He stumbled into a light post, grasping onto it in order to keep upright. His head spun. The horizon had a funny tilt to it. As he took a moment to breathe, he realized where he had brought himself. In his panicked haze he’d ended up two blocks away... No one at the Institute knew. It all came down to whether or not he’d be welcome. Martin trudged on.

 Was he imagining it, or was there blood in his shoes? His toes felt sticky but he wasn’t completely aware of his limbs at the moment. Every step was analyzed and ranked in terms of squishiness. It could have been a puddle... Oh God. He began scratching at his arms over and over, trying to claw out what traces of that night’s events that were still on him.

 Martin was falling apart.

 This was the building, same slightly shabby exterior as in years past. All he had to do was get buzzed up. Any other day, his dignity would take a hit from desperately begging for shelter from his ex but tonight seemed to be the definition of unusual circumstances. He hit the button a few times. A weary voice crackled over the intercom.

 “Hello. What do you want at this ungodly hour?”

 “Uh,” his voice caught in his throat but he pressed on. “It’s Martin. I’m sorry, I know it’s late. I... I’m in trouble. And I have nowhere else to go.”

 A moment of silence.

 “Get up here.”

 The building’s door opened for him. He practically vaulted up the stairs trying to get out of the open as soon as possible. At one pointed he tripped and came down hard on a landing between floors. It felt like nothing. He found his way to the door with some remnant of muscle memory and knocked. His heart was still beating through his chest. He couldn’t bring himself to care. The door opened.

 “Hey, Martin.”

 “Hi, Gerry.”

 Martin collapsed.

 He awoke sometime later on that beaten up couch he’d made fun of ages ago when Gerry had gotten it off the street. Something warm, black, and fuzzy was purring on his chest. He smiled.

”Hello, Mary.”

 She leaned in as he scratched behind her ear and gently bopped his arm with her paw.

 “Yeah, I missed you too.”

 An unseen voice came from the kitchen, “Oh thank the gods, you’re up. I was worried you were going to die on me.”

 Gerard Keay sat down across from him, handing him one of the two cups of hot cocoa he held.

 “And let’s be real here, you’d make a terrible ghost.”

 He had changed since Martin had last seen him. His hair was a bit shorter and pulled back, there was a new piercing through his eyebrow, and he’d turned the scar on the back of his hand into a tattoo of blooming flowers. It took some getting used to, he remembered, seeing Gerry out of his usual full black, full goth regalia and in something as innocuous as sweatpants and a t-shirt. Still cute. More tired.

 “Gerry, I—“ he began, not knowing what would come after. “I am so sorry about this. If I had anywhere else to go—“

 Gerry put a hand to his heart and raised his eyebrows in mock offense. Martin couldn’t keep from rolling his eyes. He sat up and carefully moved Mary to the floor. This was bound to be difficult, not insignificantly due to the fact that his brain still felt like it was being juiced.

 “—I wouldn’t have bothered you. It’s, um, my work.”

 “Spooky Institute?”

 “That’s the one. I can’t really tell you all of the— the uh,” he flailed for words. “The things. That is. But I am in deep trouble and I cannot go back. I’m sorry. I hope this isn’t, um...”

 A hand was on his shoulder. Gerry looked him in the eye. He’d always liked Gerry’s eyes. They were gray, but not the piercing kind, the kind like clouds about to rain. There were an embarrassing number of poems in his older notebooks centered around them. Wait, he was saying something. God, his focus was all over the place.

 “—always welcome,” he smiled. “But why did you think of here? Isn’t the Institute all the way on the other side of the city?”

 His memory following opening the door to his office and seeing red was maddeningly obscure.

 “I must’ve— I think I took the Tube?”

 It was only bits and pieces. There was an ad in the carriage for a new exhibition at the Tate Modern. He was fairly certain he was sick in a public restroom at one point. Somehow he ended up running. Something in the shadows? Gerry shook him out of his reverie. He looked serious.

 “Martin, are you high?” he asked.

 “Only barely.”

 He looked to be on the verge of a grand speech on the dangers of drugs but he held back. For this, Martin was infinitely grateful. Gerry stood and said, “Sleep it off. I’m going back to bed. I won’t press, but you’d better not be on anything while you’re here. Understood?”

 Martin nodded and sipped his cocoa. It had cooled off considerably but there were still marshmallows. Marshmallows were good. Never heard about someone getting murdered by one of them.

 Seeing that he’d drifted off into his own thoughts again, Gerry retreated into his room with a soft, “Goodnight.”

 So much of his past coming back all at once, this apartment, Gerry’s sense of humor, Mary... He missed it a bit. Not enough to do anything about it, but enough that he was overwhelmed with nostalgia for a time when his life hadn’t been so goddamn weird.

 They’d met when Gerry had come in requesting access to certain documents for research for his podcast. Martin had drawn the short straw to try and keep him out with bureaucratic nonsense. Gerry was nothing if not persistent, and eventually asked for his number. From there sprung a relationship.

 Funny things, relationships. They reveal so much. You give someone a deep, intimate knowledge of you piece by piece and trust that they won’t use it to dismantle you. And you never knew what tidbit would be the thing to break it all down. For them it had been that Gerry was with someone five years younger than they said they were and didn’t think to tell him until they’d been together for a year and a half. If one thing was a lie did that mean all of it was? Martin didn’t think so, but what did he know?

 He knew that Gerry though Banksy was full of shit, and that he liked it when he nipped at his throat while kissing him, and what he looked like while attempting to dye his hair. He knew that Gerry knew just as much about him.

 After putting his mug in the sink, turning off the lamp, and curling up on the couch he came to an admittedly opiate-fueled conclusion. The “mortifying ordeal of being known” becomes even more terrifying when love isn’t enough to keep it all together. Things break down and people take your secrets, both dark and mundane, with them when they go. He realized he could never submit to being known as he was now because he knew where the underlying fear came from. He was the one meant to strengthen it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gerry definitely tells people Mary was a witch who was turned into a cat until she learned the true meaning of friendship.


	5. Thrill of the Chase/Breathing Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A reunion and a bargain

 The one immutable truth in this and all universes, Martin concluded, was that transatlantic flights were the work of pure evil. Especially overnight. He’d never been one to sleep upright so he spent three agonizing hours lying face down on the tray table while the woman next to him noisily typed out what appeared to be Law & Order fanfiction. It was moments like that where he wouldn’t mind the sky eating him too. He was itching to be home. Things had been so fast-paced for so long and he just wanted to fall asleep at his desk and maybe have a drink with Jon once he woke up. He had a lot to tell him.

 Martin was still processing that he had  _actually spoken_ with Georgina Barker. There was a page made of her skin in carry on bag. At some point he’d grown to accept that things like that were just par for the course now. What really concerned him was how it has elicited no response whatsoever from the TSA. For years he’d viewed her as a sort of legendary figure who fought evil and brought about some form of justice. Meeting her now, beyond the veil, she seemed... lonely. It had never occurred to him that her mentorships with Elias and The Admiral were predicated on very little genuine affection. She had been a tool to them and nothing more. No one had ever even been kind enough to call her Georgie like she wanted. Martin’s own befriending abilities weren’t great but he’d felt a deep sense of kinship with her that he was still unable to fully explain.

 He’d also been thinking a great deal about Jon. A bit more than was strictly professional, but they’d bypassed boss-employee distinctions long ago. They had gotten into the habit of speaking on the phone each night that he was away. Hearing his voice was oddly calming. Even when he had to explain to him that there was a color wheel of infinite horror constantly trying to poke holes through the transdimensional barrier. At least he had someone he could shout with about how absolutely insane that was. Somewhere along the line he had decided that he needed someone he trusted unequivocally (most likely just after Gerry finished pressing him on the subject). Keeping his guard up constantly was exhausting, and with Jon he could just... be. He wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted out of their relationship but he’d take any kind of human connection at this point.

 His legs felt gelatinous as he disembarked the plane. Whether it was due to the onset of statement withdrawal or sleep deprivation remained to be seen. The trip had messed with his sense of time but it seemed to be early morning. He followed the shuffle of people through customs, waited for a good while in baggage claim, and nearly got into a fistfight with a middle aged woman in an airport Starbucks.

 Martin was not at a high point in his life.

 He’d been told Melanie was coming to pick him up which only set him further on edge. His impulses told him to get to Elias’s storage unit as soon as possible, but that seemed to be off the table at the moment. Sitting alone in a car with someone who had not only attempted to kill him but also made very rude comments about him when she knew he was in earshot was just the cherry on top of this clusterfuck of a week.  _Think of it as the last leg_ , he told himself as he passed through the front door.

 Out on the pavement was something he had not anticipated. Jon and Daisy were waiting for him, Daisy holding up a small sign that read “Blackwood” with a completely flat expression on her face and Jon fighting very hard to suppress a grin. Martin broke out smiling and rushed over to them only for Jon to meet him in the middle. They had a weird moment where neither of them were sure if they were going in for a handshake or a hug and ended up doing what externally appeared to be some form of interpretive dance. It felt like some sort of magnetic force was keeping them from property aligning. Martin finally just grabbed Jon’s hand, but forgot to shake it while he stared at him. His hair seemed a little grayer these days but it worked for him. Their eyes connected for a brief second. Tension stretched out thin and taught.

 Jon said, “Sod it.”

 And that piano wire between them snapped.

 The various times Martin had imagined kissing Jon he’d always figured it would be a gentle and hesitant sort of thing. Maybe one night in his office after they’d had a bit too much to drink. Turns out Jon kissed like he wanted to break something. He clasped either side of Martin’s face with his hands and crushed their lips together hard enough to bruise. Teeth bit at his bottom lip. He couldn’t think straight. Martin, for his part, was just as enthusiastic a party in all of this but eventually he realized that now was probably not the time. He eased Jon’s hands away from his cheeks, stroking a thumb lightly over each of them, and broke away. For a moment all he could process were starbursts sparkling against his closed eyelids. Wow...

 Daisy cleared her throat. It effectively jolted them out of whatever shell shocked daze they were in and they hurried after her to the car.

 The early morning traffic was only slightly less hellish than the everyday traffic, but it gave them time to talk. Daisy kept it succinct, “Sims got excited when you told him about the storage unit, so he told Melanie to stay behind and keep watch and then dragged me along with him to pick you up.”

 “Ah, alright,” he gave her a quick nod but she was already focused in on driving. Daisy intimidated him, but she seemed to tolerate his presence to a certain degree. He’d made a point to watch some of her videos after she first came in, curious how someone like her wound up in the entertainment business, and found that her quiet charisma leant itself well to building up a ghost story. She made you believe her. It never came up, but he ended up watching every last one. Shame she was stuck with them now.

 Somewhere along the way he reached over and took Jon’s hand in his. Jon blushing was a rare sight. He liked that he could make it happen so easily. For the duration of the ride the murmured trivialities back and forth. What were China and America like? Did you spread out the statements like I said? You wouldn’t believe the things Gertrude has done; I think she messes with us for fun. I never knew true rage until _Jennifer_ then proceeded to complain about the laziness of this generation  _the entire time_ she had to wait. They had those minutes to laugh and smile with each other. It could very well be the last moments of peace they had for a while.

 The storage facility was nondescript to the point of nearly circling back around to suspicious. The attendant let them in early when he saw the unit number, no questions asked. Storage facilities had always given Martin a deep sense of unease. He was pretty sure it had something to do with how each unit was theoretically big enough for a person to live in. There could be a whole city of people living here and he’d never know anything beyond the contents of the unit he had a key to. That’s what it was, the maddening state of not knowing what’s all around you. If it were up to him, he’d at least have plexiglass doors so people could look around like in a museum. It took them a good while to actually find Elias’s storage space. The anticipation, both excited and apprehensive, was practically killing him.

 But before he could go about unlocking it, he got a tingling sensation at the base of his neck. He paused. It climbed through his nervous system and fired off a single message.

 Martin turned around and called, “Who’s there?”

 There was nothing for a moment. He could feel Daisy and Jon looking at him strangely but he kept his on where they had just come from. A second later, a woman stepped around the corner. She wore a light blue hijab, a long dark coat, and a look of complete ease.

 “Nicely done,” she said as she strolled over to them. “I didn’t think you could do that yet.”

 Daisy came between them and asked pointedly, “Who are you?”

 The woman gave Daisy a brief appraising look before stepping around her and extending a hand to Martin.

 “Basira Hussein. I already know who you are.”

 It all fell into place. Basira Hussein, a recurring figure in various statements. Mysterious and often a harbinger of awful things to come, she was a pragmatic dealer of rare antiquities which have a nasty habit of destroying the lives of their buyers. A reputation for cold ruthlessness preceded her.

 “ **What do you want from us?** ”

 A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

 “I want a share of what’s in there. Everyone was curious about what the old guy had tucked away. He was ridiculously secretive about what all he had. Word went around that the new guy, that’s you, was doing a world tour through all the places the old guy had been in the past couple of years. I figured you were looking for information on Elias, that’s usually how it is with you guys. It seemed most likely that as soon as you got back you’d go right to whatever secret lair or super weapon you found out about. I hedged my bets and it paid off.”

 Jon scoffed, “And why would we give anything to you?”

 “You wouldn’t believe some of the stories I could tell.”

 Oh, she was good. His hands were already getting shaky from the extended amount of time without a statement. Martin had been hoping to one day get a chance to talk to her and get a better look at her place in this supernatural underworld he found himself a part of, and here she was just offering it to him. It would be so easy to say yes...

 “Look,” he began, drawing alarmed looks from the others. “I can’t just let you have whatever you want. We need things that are in there. And you’ve already proven yourself to be a public safety hazard.”

 She chuckled at that but he forged on.

 “So... so let me make an offer. We pick out five things that we won’t miss, and you can come by the Institute to pick two of them once you give your statement.”

 Basira took a minute before nodding.

 “Pleasure doing business with you.”

 She gave a wink in Daisy’s direction, whose eyes appeared to have glazed over, before disappearing back around the corner. Martin let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He knew that the others were very close to calling him a complete idiot for the decision he’d just made, but something told him that he would need Basira’s trust in the future. The Unknowing was going to test them and break them down. The Beholding had given him a single moment of clarity: Without her, they’d be lost. It seemed a fair enough price to pay. He turned back around towards the storage unit just as Jon put a hand on his shoulder. His face was lined with worry and confusion. Once more, he took Jon’s hand in his own.

 “Trust me.”

 “I do.”

 Martin tried his best to believe him. They were so close to what they needed, he couldn’t bear to lose Jon’s faith in him right when he was about to need it most. Jon squeezed his hand. The sting of that kiss still lingered on his lips. It felt so good to be wanted. As long as he had this he could make it through. Jon kept him anchored.

 “Alright then,” he fumbled with the lock until it clicked. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of the chapters I had originally planned to do! The support for this fic has been really encouraging and I appreciate it greatly. If you want to ask for a part of established canon converted to this AU or just questions about details talk to me at @mysterioussinkhole on tumblr. I’d love to hear from you!


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